The Official KCDC Wrap UP

The Stackify booth at the Kansas City Developers Conference lured a steady stream of participants eager for a free massage or a turn at the beanbag toss game to win a “Developers against Humanity” card game. They left the booth with an appreciation of the free software, Prefix, but we gained a deeper understanding of the challenges that developers face in their day to day jobs.

More than 1,500 developers from the Midwest gathered at KCDC for the two-day event to hear more than 80 speakers and pick up some tips and learn new things they could implement in their positions. We had some great conversations and are excited to share just a few of the conversations from the developers who came by the booth.

We love developers and we love Kansas City. That makes the Kansas City Dev Con a killer combo for us. Boon and all the organizers did a fantastic job this year. For those that missed out on our Prefix can toss game with Chewie or the Jedi chair massages, maybe we’ll bring them back next year. When asked about the day-to-day challenges he faces in his job, Matt Breitkreutz, a web applications engineer at Children’s Mercy Hospital responded.

“We have communication gaps and expectation gaps. We have a backlog of work and any resources that help us solve that we’ll look at.”

We also had the opportunity to talk to many .NET developers that hadn’t yet tried Prefix, our free .NET profiler. After learning more about Prefix at the booth, Rebekah Patterson, a .NET developer with NIC Inc., said she had heard about the free program but wanted more information.

“We need solutions to help us analyze the problems,” Patterson said. To help her build a better developer career, she tries to learn about the newest apps and software.

“I like coming to conferences like this. I take classes and look at websites, and I’m always trying to stay current on what’s new.”

Michael Jones listened to Jordan Crowder explain the object of the beanbag toss game—to knock down the stack of cans while wearing blacked-out glasses, similar to the difficulty of trying to find bugs in code without being able to see them. Then Jones tried his hand at the game and knocked down the cans. The software developer at NIC Inc. said building better performing applications is important to him.

“I like the idea of Prefix, it helps you verify that you coded correctly,” he added.

While Sneha Desai, a software engineer at Cerner, listened to Shimmens talk about Prefix, her co-worker Vamsi Krishna Guntupalli tried to knock the cans down with a different challenge, wearing a Chewbacca mask. He was able to hit the display after a few tries, and took home a copy of the card game. Not to be left out, another Cerner developer Kiran kumar Vuyyuru also tried on the mask and knocked down the stack.

The consensus among conference attendees who stopped at the Stackify booth was summed up by Desai after she gathered information about Prefix.

“This is pretty innovative,” said Desai. “Massage and a game, very nice.”

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Published by Mary Schulte

Owner of a photography business based in Kansas City that delivers storytelling images for small businesses, non-profits and Life Seniors. Adjunct professor at Johnson County Community College.
View all posts by Mary Schulte